Easy, like really easy, backup of unraid to synology?

[kjqbgewyjeld]

I have an unraid smb_share (currently one disc in my array) that I would like to periodically backup to a synology DS116 (don't even need to be able to edit there) that is on same network elsewhere on site.  I have read thousands of terse posts about various hacks that are often in the wrong direction (i.e. synology to unraid), apparently insecure (just give client root account), or frankly just a PITA for a non-expert to learn and remember how to fix when they change in a year, e.g. "Rsync over ssh, rclone, ftps, or VPN, duh" each sounded fine until I realized that they each seem to require app/plugin/package/scripting on some ambiguous end of the phone (which is push/pull client/server?) that need a secret share/folder/user/group/port/permission and hours of googling to troubleshoot.  Is there really no turnkey solution(s)?  Or at least a step-by-step written for a frail grandmother type that doesn't know the difference between apps and plugins?

[Ilias]

I have used Duplicati to do that for quite some time now, and it seemed to be working perfectly, but lately it throws some errors that make me doubt its reliability.

Therefore, I'm on the same boat, looking for a solution to backup unraid to DSM (synology)

Edited January 4 by Ilias

[Macj72x]

Did you ever find a solution to this?

 

I have a synology nas that I setup a point to point tunnel to that I wish to run backups to.  Trying to find an easy and secure solution.

Edited January 30 by Macj72x

[Poprin]

I'm still testing this but to answer the original question, yes there is a simple way of doing this leveraging the Synology software suite. I've googled this extensively and came across this post and I'm really surprised there is no info about this on the internet because I imagine there must be quite a few people out there with both an Unraid and a Synology. 

 

The application you need to use on your Synology is Active Backup For Business. Install this and you do need to register with your Synology account because although it is free you do need to confirm your hardware for it to work I think. From within the software the backup option you want is 'file server' (not server, specifically file server as this essentially backs up an SMB target). To setup you need to link an SMB server (unraid). You need to either create or use an existing setup user account on unraid. You can either use your host name or IP as the server name, enter the credentials for the SMB account you have created on unraid. This will setup unraid as a file server SMB source. You can then go into tasks and create a backup task (Mirror, Incremental, multi version). I have personally used mirror as an option because my Synology supports BTRFS snapshots and I have configured that to take a snapshot of the backup location on a weekly basis so that I can roll back any issues through snapshot manager rather than Active Backup For Business.

 

Only been using this for about a week and have been experimenting as I found no specific info online but it appears to be working an absolute treat!

[bdjay]

This is exactly what I needed! Seems to be working great, thank you!

[Poprin]

On 3/18/2024 at 12:53 AM, bdjay said:

This is exactly what I needed! Seems to be working great, thank you!

Glad it has been of help to someone, I can confirm I am still using this in the way described above and it works great. It was also really easy to setup and Synology has a nice interface to use to mange versioned recovery options either through the active backup for business suite (if you use multi-versioning) or through the replication manager.

 

Just a disclaimer this may sound like a Synology advert, it is not. I have been an unraid user for over 10 years and continue to do so but I have recently dipped my toe into using Synology to compliment my setup and from a software perspective I am very impressed.

[DarthRUSerious]

Another option is SyncThing.  You can install the unraid docker and then the community app on Package Manager.  it's a little tricky to get the paths correct, but after that, it works fine. 

 

You can also install the Container Manager that will allow you to install any number of Docker containers, like UrBackup or LuckyBackup

 

To be clear, these are sync'd mirrors, not true backup solutions like snapshots.  Borg, Duplicacy and others provide options for actual immutable snapshots.

Edited Monday at 04:31 PM by DarthRUSerious